The Democrats' unity myth

Not long ago, I was kibitzing about the presidential campaign with a group of Democratic politicos at a fundraiser in New York, and the conversation quickly turned into a dissection of the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses.

The biggest Hillary Rodham Clinton booster in the group argued that there were important differences on the issues between the two front-runners.

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That made me curious, given how few meaningful and vigorous policy fights there have been in this style-driven campaign.

So I asked the Clinton fan and the rest of the group to name a few big disagreements that stood out to them.

One pointed to the fact that Clinton’s universal health care proposal had an individual mandate and Barack Obama’s did not.

Another noted that Obama wanted to get all troops, except for a small residual force, out of Iraq a bit more quickly than Clinton proposed to do.

The others looked stumped.

This is what seems to pass for debate and divergence within Democratic circles these days.

The party that was once roused and riven by epochal, foundational fights — over using nuclear weapons, confronting communism, guaranteeing civil rights — has been reduced to small squabbles about mechanistic minutia in otherwise strikingly similar policy plans.

Most Democrats see this new burst of apparent consensus as a reason to celebrate, and understandably so.

They are exhausted by the divisiveness of the Bush era and are extra eager for a fresh start.

More importantly, they recognize that the political fundamentals are now in their favor and are confident that they can win back the White House — if the party just stays unified and plays smart.

But dig a little deeper, and take a look at the Democrats’ stands on a range of emerging challenges and threats to our prosperity and security that the party has yet to thrash out with safe answers to sate the base.

What you find is not so much an absence of disagreement but an avoidance of risk — and a minimum of bold new ideas that would actually meet the public’s clear demand for wholesale change and qualify as mandate material.

For example, take China, our most threatening economic competitor and important bilateral relationship in the world.

Most Americans may not know what the yuan is, let alone how it should be valued. But they are well aware of the great and growing influence China is having on our economic well-being, not to mention the safety of our children.

Yet the Democratic candidates have spent more time debating Clinton’s clothing choices and Obama’s recreational activities than they have defining what our China policy should be in the decade ahead.

Even their websites — the home for the candidate’s inner wonk — barely mentioned the country: Obama’s main economic and foreign policy pages referenced China four times in passing; Clinton’s, not at all.

Or take entitlement spending.

The real fairy tale in this race is that it would somehow be possible mathematically or politically for a President Obama or Clinton to carry out his or her core agenda — to repeal the Bush tax cuts, deliver universal health care and energy independence, and get the budget back in balance — without somehow constraining the explosive growth of Social Security and Medicare outlays.

Yet both candidates have barely paid lip service to the mother of all budgetary stink bombs they are about to inherit with the mass retirement of the baby boomers.

In fact, their only public debate on the subject has consisted of brief, empty jibes, with Clinton attacking Obama for merely suggesting he was open to raising the cap on Social Security taxes and Obama attacking Clinton for not offering any fixes for shoring up the trust fund.

Most Democratic strategists believe it would be somewhere between pointless and stupid — and, in the case of entitlements, suicidal — to focus on these and other unsettled issues now in the primary.

Polls show they are not priorities for prime Democratic voters and thus offer little, if any, immediate upside while carrying considerable risk.

The standard and safer move would be to hold off until the general election to expand your policy vision.